Chris Montgomery Literary Rap - John Keats

This is a (slightly) self-mocking stream of hip-hop style lyrics about the life, work, and themes of the English Romantic poet John Keats. Hip-hop, apparently, is a very inclusive genre. This is the improved, easier-to-find version, replacing the less-polished and more cellphone-filmed other version. I am fully aware of just how nerdy this is. Lyrics are below; enjoy!

John Keats was the man but he died too young
Mightve been the king but his song got sung;
(Past-tense)*, low-rent, he lived like he died
Underappreciated all the other poets sighed;
Shelley penned a lament, had to vent the rage
Cause his main man Keats up and quit the stage
Exit stage death through the great trap-door
Six feet deep and theres nothing more—
Couldve been the next Shakespeare if hed stayed around
By far the best marriage of meaning and sound
Around, now all his work can be easily bound
In a single slim volume; no one found
The cure to his ills, tuberculosis
Killed many men that we like to call poets
You open a book, but sickness closed his
With a bang like a gun, messy like a blunderbuss
All that gorgeous language made to desert us
Too porous, the passage from life to death
Keats re-wrote the chorus with every breath
Depicted the line between art and truth:
He knew the real world couldnt be too smooth,
So he looked for a way to gain perfection
Casting around in imagination
You find the answer in most of his lyrics:
An unchanging realm of static spirits
Ec-static, you might say, but only at first
If you dont have change then youre basically cursed.
If ripe fruit never falls, how do you eat?
Life requires death cycles to keep it complete.
So revert to the real world, back to your seat
Just sit yourself down and put up your feet
Wanna pay for the edge but you need it all
Settle into the world and heed the call
Of birds, nightingales and others, pheasants,
Urns and farmers, peasants, some unpleasant:
An ode to a night in jail, the turning of the seasons,
Winter stabs Summer in the back like treason—
But with reason, though you whine cause youre freezing.
What he helps us understand is a giant region
Of the human mind, how we dont want to die
So we lie and we cry and we even try
To fly up and pry back the wings of Death
Use every breath to keep things from flowing
Might as well try to stop the wind from blowing—
But if you listen to this one mans rhymes
(And they reach like an echo down to modern times)
Youll understand the lesson in the years first snow:
Youll know that its stupid trying to stop the flow.

*Note: I'm aware that the word "sung" is not actually past-tense; somehow, though, it just seemed to flow better than "past-participle." Few words are so vehemently non-hip-hop as "participle."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Literary
• Literature
• English
• Romantic
• Rap
• Hip-hop
• lyric
• John
• Keats
• Chris
• Montgomery
• nerd
• nerdy

[Verseaurainbows]

This is a thing of utter glory

[rowanofravara]

Brilliant

[TheReginaldDwight]

Please check your private messages

ChrisMontgomeryCM.

[thesweetess]

GO CHRIS!!! WOOOT:)

[dci99068]

geez

[kwb811]

but i dont wanna do an essay :O

[alexkjkool]

GO CHRIS DOWG!!!

[yohellojoe]

Excellent, although I think the Browning rap is your masterpiece.